Asheville moonshine maker diversifies

“It’s still a work in process, and there’s a lot of work ahead of us ... ” says Troy Ball of Troy & Sons Distillers of the legal moonshine-making facility in East Asheville.
(Photo: Erin Brethauer,
ebrethau
@citizen-times.com
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ASHEVILLE – When Troy Ball moved to Asheville with her husband, Charlie Ball, neither expected to get involved in the local hooch business. But, inspired by the Appalachian craft of moonshine-making, the Balls started a legal moonshine-making facility in East Asheville.

Now, Troy & Sons — named after the couple's three sons and produced by the Balls' Asheville Distilling Company — is on track to see a tenfold production increase since it released its first bottle in 2011. The distillery produces Troy & Sons Platinum, an heirloom corn-based white whiskey. There's also a "blonde whiskey" and an Oak Reserve, which is aged in oak barrels. The company also announced this week that it will roll out cinnamon- and nectarine-flavored versions of its whiskey, available first in Texas, New York and Chicago.

The whiskey-maker's growth is a hard number to track, really, said Troy Ball, since much of that moonshine is aging in barrels and some goes to make other products, such as third-generation moonshiner Tim Smith's new label, Climax Moonshine, named after his hometown in Virginia.

"That's a pretty big deal, because he's on the Moonshiner TV show," said Ball, referring to the Discovery Channel reality series. "When he's in town, dropping by the distillery, we can't go anywhere where he's not stopped and grabbed by people."

Smith approached Ball early on in the history of Troy & Sons. But it was too early in the life of the business to consider taking over production of someone else's whiskey, she said. But then, with the installation in late 2012 of a new 5,000-liter still (the largest German still imported into the country, according to the Balls) Asheville Distilling Company more than doubled its capacity.

Ball said she always knew she'd be successful when she kickstarted her distillery business. "That's why I did it," she said. "We thought we had an opportunity to bring real Appalachian secret-keeper moonshines to the national market, and also develop the ability to make American cocktails with an American spirit, rather than a Russian vodka, or a Mexican tequila."

Ball thinks the interest in American-made, in particular Southern, ingredients has helped drive the popularity of her moonshine. "I think that the craft beer scene has also helped to educate consumers on looking for craft spirits as well," she said.

Now the distillery has a number of high-profile clients, including Harrah's Casino, the Ritz-Carlton in Atlanta, Blackberry Farm in Tennessee, both locations of Sean Brock's Husk and Disney World resorts. (At Disney, Troy & Sons goes into the Moonshine Margarita and Mountain Trail Cocktail.)

Still, the moonshiner occasionally casts a nervous eye toward the "big guys," who control much of the liquor market and make it harder for a smaller distillery to thrive, she said. In American whiskey, that means companies like Jack Daniels and Jim Beam, which last year released white whiskey labels called Unaged Tennessee Rye and Jacob's Ghost, respectively.

"I still am not to the point where I'm not worried about it," she said. "It's still a work in process, and there's a lot of work ahead of us to really get to where it's a secure, stable business."

A small distiller, said Ball, has to earn a place in bars based on the merit of its product. "And that's a whole different game than the way the big brands run," she said.

One way to keep up is to learn to play the game, and much like the larger companies with their new white whiskey labels, Asheville Distilling is also working to diversify by adding flavored moonshine to its repertoire.

Most recently, the company added a nectarine- and mountain honey-flavored whiskey, as well as a cinnamon-honey whiskey, both made from Troy & Sons Platinum.

"From the beginning of when I started to learn to distill, I started experimenting with flavoring whiskeys," Ball said. "Just because that's such the classic mountain thing to do. You don't see it typically in other parts of the country, and I wanted to bring to market, eventually, the right formulations."

The flavors will be available this summer in liquor stores throughout the Southeast, along with Texas, New York and Chicago, and will be coming soon to other locations across the United States.

Two more flavors are in the works, using the distillery's aged whiskey. "One is a black-cherry whiskey, and the other one is an Old Fashioned," said Ball. "I'm really excited about those, because they kind of simplify cocktail-making. I'm pleased with the way all of these are coming together."

Additionally, said Ball, the company is testing out its own branded bourbon. "We'll take just the heart of that bourbon distillation, and we'll be running some tests on that over time, and see if we get happy with that bourbon product."

Asheville Distilling Company is at 12 Old Charlotte Highway in Asheville. More at www.ashevilledistilling.com.